Thursday, December 07, 2006

Wish List goes on the Thursday 13!

Thirteen Things about Rashenbo #1TT Edition #70 12/07/06

So, I've got a friend (yes! I have a friend! Woot! I know I've got at least one of em!) You've probably seen her comments on my lovely ramblings. She's got a great blog and every single Thursday without fail she has this little thing called the Thursday Thirteen. I tried to resist... really I did. You see the post... so you know I failed in my resisting. Here it is, I've joined the Thursday Thirteen jubilee! (Feel free to blame Susan.)

Since I decided to start the little Secret Santa (also known as the holiday gnome, wish fairy, or whatever floats your boat) I thought that I would make a wish list... the Thursday Thirteen is a list - so here we go!

1. I wish I knew how to make the codes work to actually place buttons side-by-side in my sidebar instead of paragraph spaces between them. I think it will dress up my site. I like to just sit here and stare at my blog sometimes when I don't want to do anything else. The unorganized button structure bugs my OCDness.

2. I wish I had mad musical skills like my friend (I've claimed him - so there's no point in his resisting) Crushing Krisis or my other friend, Susan. Unfortunately, I can't carry a tune in a bucket, keep a melody if my life depended on it, or remember anything about a beat. I can hear a song 3 times in a row and still not recognize it within the first 4 or 5 seconds. My husband likes to test my musical knowledge all the time. He says, "who sings this?". I like to respond with: "Michael Bolton", "Cyndi Lauper" (however she spelled it) or "Michael Jackson". He just loves when I do that :D Every now and then I get lucky - usually with Nickelback, Aerosmith, Metallica, The Beatles - folks like that :)

3. I wish I knew how to teach my daughter how to understand counting by twos.4. I wish I had more patience.5. I wish I was a teacher.

Here's why: She's six. She's in the first grade. She's got ADD. I counted by twos for about 15 minutes. I showed her how adding 2 each time is like a pattern. She even said, "it's a pattern!" Then I gave her a work sheet of numbers 1 - 50 and said, ok, count by 2 and color all the 2's blue. It was a worksheet she was supposed to do at school and the teacher sent it home so that we could try and get her to do it. After more time (about 30 minutes) talking about 2's... I drew pictures. I drew little math problems of 2 + 2 = 4 / 4+2 = 6, etc. I wrote the list of 2's up to #30 and had her look at it and read the numbers to me.

This is how the conversation went down after our "studying":"Pea Pie, count by 2's and color them blue. Here is the crayon and here is the worksheet."- - "What do I do?""Do you remember talking about 2's?"- - "Yes.""Can you count by 2's for me right now?"- - "um... no.""Why not?"- - "I don't know how to count by 2's""Do you remember how we counted 2, 4, 6, 8"- - "Yes.""That's counting by twos. Find the 2s and color them blue."- - "But there are more numbers than those ones.""Yes. Yes there are. Can you find them for me?"- - "Are they these ones" she points to 20, 21, 22, 23 and begins to color them all red.= fast forward five minutes later *thud* *thud* *thud* That's my head hitting the table while she is rolling around on the floor crying about how bored she is, how she doesn't understand, and how she wants to go take a bath. Good lord - teaching children is hard work!

6. I wish my husband would send in our XBox 360 for repair so I can build up more gamer points! He can be a real slacker sometimes. :) I think our gamer profile is um, Snaggle Tuuth (A name with a real history here... we used to telnet into MUDS and then used Zmud to play text based rpg's and one of my hub's first characters was Snaggle. Then we moved to EQPC... we had the whole Tuuth family: Gappe, Sweete, Snaggle - etc. I've posted on where I got my handle. Snaggle is my husband's.)

7. I wish I had endless amounts of gift certificates to Borders, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble book stores! Mmmm, gift certificates... they are as good as donuts!

8. I wish I had a diet and exercise plan that I was actually able to follow!

9. I wish I had some new socks. I love socks. I like fuzzy ones and wool ones and knee high ones. I like ones with bright stripes. My favorites are a pair of red and whites... and then I've got this great pair with monkey faces on them... Right now I'm wearing black, white, and gray striped slipper socks with the grinch on them. What kind of socks are you wearing right now?

10. I wish I had a neat "Reviewed by Rashenbo" button that I could give to blogs I review.

11. I wish I had one of those new Civilizations games - they look neat.

12. I wish I knew what was going to happen on Heroes next... I want my own super power. Like a little magic cleaning fairy. I could squint my eyes real tight and then she'd appear and she'd dust, and vacumn, and do my dishes, and yes... she would even tackle the dreaded laundry...

13. What's a wish list without wishing for World Peas? I wish for world peas.

41 Comments:

Welcome to the Thursday Thirteen folks! I think you have a very interesting list here.

If you figure out how to line up your sidebar buttons, please let me know!

About teaching kids to count by 2's....well, I can't remember how I did that. Seems like we jumped over and did every other one. I don't know. I'm a teacher--but I teach English to college freshmen. (Sometimes it's just as hard and I want to dash my head against the wall!)

There are too many things about your list that I could comment on -- #! is why I just stack things on each other and center them. Otherwise it upsets my CDO (OCD in alphabetical order like it's supposed to be). Speaking of OCD, counting by twos is one of the things I do in my head when I'm thinking.

I don't have children, but she'll get it. Just hope that she doesn't get it the CDO way I did! ;)

Have you tried taking out the paragraph breaks in your sidebar? I know blogger can be finicky at times...if that doesn't work when visiting other blogspot blogs, if you see one that has the sidebar arranged in a way you like, view the source and that should help ya out :)

sometimes I'm not sure how I explain things to my kids, I just try one way, then another untill something sticks. I'm actually surprised when they get something. and I homeschool..am I scaring you?!happy TT!

Welcome to Thursday Thirteen! Great list! Does your daughter know even and odd numbers? If so you can use that to help with counting by twos, it's all the even numbers! ~ Or pulling out the M&Ms works...make groups of two and let her count them until she gets the hang of it. I taught 3rd grade for 5 years and they were pretty good at counting by 2s and 5s by the time they got to me. Sorry I can't be more help.

Wow! You guys are fast visitors!!! I'm just floating down the TT list having a great time. I pop over to my site and look at all these comments!

I love the idea for M&M's. I'm going to buy some tomorrow and try them. The counting by twos thing is happening at the same time that she's supposed to be learning evens and odds... and she is NOT getting the concept. We've spent four or five days on evens and odds (not counting the teacher and the math helper they brought in to help her).

I would be teaching Kindergarten or 1st Grade, if I were working. Off the top of my head, when it comes to counting by twos, the M&M's can be helpful (they even have M&M counting BOOKS!), or Music. Get a beat going: one TWO, three, FOUR... well, it's hard to describe in writing, but I could try if you wanted me to. I'll keep thinking. :)

Welcome! Great post and I need to learn to do some of these things myself. I often call on my kids to help me with computer stuff.

Count by 2's, 5's, whatever just takes time. If you are in the car or wherever, make a game of it. You say 1, she says 2, then you 3, etc. She will remember her turn and what # comes next....hopefully.

Welcome aboard and what a great way to start! Your little girl will get the 'counting by twos' thing, just keep at it. Make a game out of it. Write the numbers down and make up a little song.Thanks for visiting my TT.

#9 - Right now, I'm wearing dumb black cotton socks (you asked!). But a couple of weeks ago, I asked my three year old what she wanted to get Daddy for Christmas. She said "striped socks" so we went to the store and she picked out some striped socks. Secretly, I hope that they end up in my drawer.

#12... OMG, I am soooo addicted! I hate that we have to wait until Jan... jerks! LOL... I want the super power of Hiro... go back & buy a lotto ticket with the winning numbers... catch up on my sleep...

Great wishlist. I teach my son at home and it IS a test in patience to teach a rambunctious, ADD, ADHD, or any child that doesn't like to /can't sit still anything that requires they pay close attention LOL

Don't worry about your daughter...sometime rote memory is part of the learning process--think about the alphabet and counting, pure memorization. Maybe have her just repeat counting by 2's up to 10, and next week up to 20 and so on...eventually the pattern kicks in and her brain will recognize it.